August 2014 Quotations (61)

"The energy of the mind is the essence of life."
~~ Greek philosopher Aristotle [384-322 B.C.E.]

"Facebook is not your friend, it is a surveillance engine."
~~ internet activist Richard M. Stallman

"The political machine triumphs because it is a united minority acting against a divided majority.”
~~ Will Durant [1885-1981]

“Happiness is a gift and the trick is not to expect it, but to delight in it when it comes.”
~~ Charles Dickens [1812-70]

"Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will."
~~ Frederick Douglass [1818-95]

"To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, be nothing."
~~ Elbert Hubbard [1856-1915]

"The philosopher ought never to try to avoid the duty of making up his mind."
~~ Mortimer J. Adler [1902-2001]

"The supreme crime of [organized religion] to-day is that everywhere and in all its operations and influences it is on the side of sloth of mind, that it banishes brains, it sanctifies stupidity, it canonizes incompetence."
~~ Upton Sinclair [1878-1968], in "The Profits of Religion: An Essay In Economic Interpretation" (1918)

"Seek the truth or hide your head in the sand. Both require digging."
~~ Andrew Nolan

"Unless we love and are loved, each of us is alone, each of us is deeply lonely."
~~ Mortimer J. Adler [1902-2001]

“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
~~ Oscar Wilde [1854-1900]

"Change your thoughts and you change your world."
~~ Norman Vincent Peale [1898-1993]

"I fell in love with cinema because I preferred this life instead of real life."
~~ Claude Lelouch

"The price of apathy towards public affairs is to be ruled by evil men."
~~ Plato [428?-327? B.C.E.]

"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy: that is the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."
~~ John Kenneth Galbraith [1908-2006]

"The most important fact about Spaceship Earth: an instruction manual didn't come with it."
~~ R. Buckminster Fuller [1895-1983]

"The map is not the territory."
~~ Alfred Korzybski [1879-1950]

"There's a moral here somewhere."
~~ Anthony Lane, New Yorker Magazine critic

"The twentieth century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: the growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy."
~~ Alex Carey, in "Taking The Risk Out of Democracy" (1996)

"Ask for what you want and be prepared to get it."
~~ Maya Angelou [1928-2014]

"I'd like to believe an accumulation of experience has made me a sort of a grown-up person, so I can have judgment and taste and whatever."
~~ Maurice Sendak [1928-2012]

"The secret of your future is hidden in your daily routine."
~~ televangelist Mike Murdock

"It is never too late or too soon, it is when it is supposed to be."
~~ Mitch Albom

"What you owe yourself is to work for your living; what you owe your neighbor is not to interfere with his work."
~~ Ayn Rand [1905-82]

"No act of kindness no matter how small is ever wasted."
~~ Aesop [620–564 B.C.E.]

“We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures.”
~~ Thornton Wilder [1897-1975]

"There's nothing [that] you can't prove if your outlook is only sufficiently limited.”
~~ Dorothy L. Sayers [1893-1957]

"It is better to live one day as a lion, than a dozen years as a sheep."
~~ Louis L'Amour [1908-88], in "Flint" (1960)

"There are no fresh starts in life, just new opportunities to screw up."
~~ Steve Lopez

"Nobody ever listened himself out of a job."
~~ Calvin Coolidge [1872-1933]

"A basic proposition of epistomology . . . is that an observed fact requires no proof; it simply IS, self-demonstrating."
~~ Robert A. Heinlein [1907-88]

"One must have the mind of winter to behold the nothing that is not there and the nothing that is."
~~ poet Wallace Stevens [1879-1955]

“Statism survives by looting; a free country survives by production.”
~~ Ayn Rand [1905-82]

"The man who makes no mistakes does not usually make anything."
~~ Edward John Phelps [1822-1900]

"Only the impossible happens. The Universe is impossible. You and I are impossible. And there it is."
~~ R. Buckminster Fuller [1895-1983]

"It's hard to know when to respond to the seductiveness of the world and when to respond to its challenge . . . I arise in the morning torn between the desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world."
~~ E.B. White [1899-1985]

"Salad is not a meal!" ~~ guys' saying

"Whosoever plants a tree / Winks at immortality"
~~ Post-It poem by Felix Dennis [1947-2014]

"A champion is someone who gets up when he can't."
~~ boxer Jack Dempsey [1895-1983]

"In the future there will be no female leaders. There will just be leaders."
~~ Facebook, Inc. COO Sheryl Sandberg

"The chief trick to making good mistakes is not to hide them – especially not from yourself."
~~ philosopher Daniel Dennett

"Repetition makes us feel secure and variation makes us feel free."
~~ poet Robert Hass

"There is no such thing as perfect security, only varying levels of insecurity."
~~ Salman Rushdie

"Luxury must be comfortable, otherwise it is not luxury."
~~ Coco Chanel [1883-1971]

"Children need models more than they need critics."
~~ essayist Joseph Joubert [1754-1824]

"The battle to halt global warming, aka 'climate change', is over. We lost."
~~ G.E. Nordell

"People are hungry for stories. It's part of our very being. Storytelling is a form of history. It goes from one generation to another."
~~ Louis 'Studs' Terkel [1912-2008]

"Affliction comes to us, not to make us sad but sober, not to make us sad but wise."
~~ H.G. Wells [1866-1946]

"The great advantage of living in a large family is that early lesson of life's essential unfairness."
~~ Nancy Mitford [1904-73]

"Nothing clears up a case so much as stating it to another person."
~~ Sir Arthur Conan Doyle [1859-1930]

"They don't call women 'the opposite sex' for nothing!"
~~ G.E. Nordell

"All cats are libertarians: Completely dependent on others but fully convinced of their own independence."
~~ showed up on Twitter circa 2009

"As soon as I saw you I knew an adventure was going to happen."
~~ Winnie the Pooh character, as written by A.A. Milne [1882-1956]

“A library card is the start of a lifelong adventure.”
~~ Lilian Jackson Braun [1913-2011]

"It's ironic how in America the colors red, white, and blue represent freedom until they're flashing behind you."
~~ syndicated comedian Argus Hamilton

"Success is achieved by developing our strengths, not by eliminating our weaknesses."
~~ Marilyn vos Savant

"Ninety-nine percent honesty is the foundation of any relationship."
~~ line from 2014 movie "What If"

"The Koch Industries have a philosophy that profits are above everything else."
~~ Bill Koch, on "60 Minutes"

"The contemplation of things as they are, without error or confusion, without substitution or imposture, is in itself a nobler thing than a whole harvest of invention."
~~ Sir Francis Bacon [1561-1626] (tacked to the darkroom door of American photographer Dorothea Lange [1895-1965])

"Whether humanity makes it or not depends on the way [that] we behave today."
~~ R. Buckminster Fuller [1895-1983]

"The one thing that can change most of our problems is dancing."
~~ rock legend James Brown [1933-2006]

"Hydraulic fracturing IS pollution until scientifically proven otherwise."
~~ G.E. Nordell

"Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none."
~~ William Shakespeare [1564-1616] Page

{each set of blogged quotations are then posted at the Working Minds website, alphabetical by author}